Review of Revenge of the Musketeers

Bertrand Taverneir moves as fluidly between 'costume' pictures and modern-day dramas as Graham Greene moved between novels and 'entertainments' and here he gives us a delightful soufflé' with perhaps five believable words in the whole two hours. It borrows lavishly if only in spirit, from the Hollywood that gave us The Prisoner Of Zenda type movies where the personnel lace every sword-fight with one-liners. For what it's worth the plot has Sophie Marceau - raised in a convent lo these many years - witnessing the brutal murder of the Mother Superior and vowing revenge which will naturally involve finding her father, D'Artagnan, now an ex-musketeer, and teaming up with the original three (Athos, Porthos, Aramis) and overthrowing a plot to assassinate the new King. Although Tavernier wisely portrays Eloise as something less than an accomplished fencer he cancels this out to some extent by having her leap onto a horse as if she'd been riding all her life when she has, of course, been raised in a convent. No matter, there's swordplay, wordplay, a hissable villain in the shape of Claude Rich - looking uncannily like a smiling George C. Scott - Philippe Noiret as D'Artagnan and Sophie Marceau as his daughter. What's not to like.